The Lies They Told

By Mary Perrine

No one noticed me until the day I went missing. From that point on, they couldn't stop seeing me. My face was plastered everywhere - in the news, on social media, and on fliers tacked up around the small Minnesota town of Cedar Point.

For my entire adult life, I had been invisible. I wasn't an oops, a child my parents would eve

• Language: English
• Publisher: 10,000 Lakes Publishing
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985790818

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Jane Hart

No one saw me until the day I disappeared. I had always been right in front of them; they just didn’t notice. I was invisible to nearly everyone I knew. At least that’s the way it always felt. But on that day, the day I went missing, people couldn’t stop seeing me.

Maybe everyone in the world felt as I did. Perhaps social media had turned us into people who felt and saw ourselves for less than we were—made us doubt our value. Was that possible? But then I remembered. The way they treated me wasn’t the way they treated everyone else. For forty-seven years, they had treated me as if I didn’t exist; I was a nobody, completely unseen—until that day.

The local stations ran stories about my disappearance at the beginning of every newscast. Social media exploded with photos and posts. You couldn’t scroll through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter without seeing my face multiple times a day; even people who didn’t know me shared the posts, spreading the message across the country. Old YouTube videos from my work resurfaced. Photos had been clipped from the videos asking if anyone had seen Jane Hart, the missing woman from Cedar Point, Minnesota. KCLM Radio invited my ex-colleagues, neighbors, and friends to call in with leads, stories, and information—no matter how small or insignificant. And believe me, they would have been insignificant since no one bothered to treat me the way I treated them.

I was everywhere in Cedar Point, and yet, I was nowhere. I was so close, they could have felt my breath, but they still didn’t see me past their insecurities or their obsessions with themselves. I was with them, standing among them, but their blindness to anyone else made it nearly impossible to focus on me. Oh, they tried, but doing something because it looks good to others and doing it because it’s the right thing to do are two entirely different beasts.

After nearly sixty hours of the local police unearthing the clues so carefully laid out for them, the search turned in a new direction. Were they searching for the Jane Hart who was still breathing life or the one who was silenced by death?

***

On the third day, near nightfall, people poured into the town square, leaving the comfort of their couches and homes in the small town of Cedar Point to help in the search. Police cars lined the main street; red and blue lights blindingly flashed shards of light into the crowd from both ends of the block. Local officers, as well as those from neighboring towns, directed traffic onto the side streets where cars had been abandoned at odd angles. Heavy bags loaded with search gear dangled from their shoulders or hung across their backs as they made their way to the center of the square. Neighbor greeted neighbor with nothing more than a nod or a smile. Being there was for their benefit, not mine.

A sharp whistle dulled the drone of the group of nearly three hundred but did not silence it. I knew every person there: colleagues whom I had worked with for the past twenty-five years before I retired a few months earlier, Pastor Gray and other parishioners from Holy Cross Lutheran Church where I attended services, acquaintances from the hospital where I had recently begun volunteering one day a week, the woman from the floral shop—the only person who knew my secret penchant for anonymously sending flowers to locals who needed an extra pick-me-up, neighbors to whom I dropped off gifts, meals, treats, and flowers—but who never reciprocated—and people claiming me as their Facebook friend, but never inviting me to their homes or calling me on the phone.

Old John Henry, a recently arrived drifter, who everyone knew had a nose for free food, strolled the edge of the crowd near the provisions station. A dark blue sweater riddled with holes, covered by an oversized ratty suit jacket, worn cargo pants with a surfeit of pockets, and a pair of my husband’s old running shoes were his choice of clothing today and every day. His sudden appearance in town a few weeks back had not surprised any of the locals. Cedar Point was located on a main highway, which made it a common location for the homeless or drifters to rest before moving to warmer destinations for the winter. A filthy, tattered pillowcase filled with John Henry’s worldly belongings never left his hand. When he first arrived, I gave him money and delivered food to him on multiple occasions. I repeatedly tried to take him to the On Again, Off Again thrift shop, but he always politely refused.

The owners of Knuckle Sandwiches and Just Desserts Bakery had set out trays of mini-sandwiches and bite-size sweets. Fresh Thyme Market, the local grocer, pulled in a pick-up filled with cases of cold water and soda. The tailgate had been left open for the thirsty search party. As John Henry passed in front of the tables, he helped himself to one of each item. The elderly woman who monitored the food wrapped up a second sandwich and handed it to him. He acknowledged her kindness with a sideways grin before tucking the food into his pillowcase and moving near the edge of the crowd.

My family—if you could call them that—was there as well. Doug and Viv, my parents, had driven down from their home in Duluth, on Lake Superior. It was the first time I had seen them together since I left home nearly thirty years before. I would have recognized my mother’s perfection anywhere. No one, except Viv, would arrive for a search in heels, dress slacks, and a designer coat. My father was now gray, both in hair and skin color. He didn’t stand as tall as he once had; he was slightly hunched over and walked with a cane. He appeared to be unsteady on his feet, but when he tried to hold my mother’s arm for support, she pushed his hand away.

My identical twin sisters, Laurel and Lily, arrived a short time later with their husbands in tow—dressed in what I assumed to be their Thursday matching outfits: designer jeans, silky blouses, pink sweaters draped over their shoulders, pink plaid canvas deck shoes and, of course, pink leather Coach purses tucked in the crook of their elbows, held like they were on a shopping trip. Their clothes weren’t identical, but they were close enough to ensure it was part of their joint shopping ensemble. Lily and Laurel looked more alike today than they ever had with their straight blonde shoulder-length hair, highlighted with ultra-blonde streaks in nearly the same places.

Their husbands appeared to be cut from the same cloth. But while they looked alike—the same haircut and similar dress, they weren’t twins. They had just been sucked into my sisters’ childish game of samesies—a game they played growing up, one that excluded everyone else, including me—their younger sister.

My sons, Luke and Cole, both introverts except with their closest friends, hid in the shadows to avoid the free-flowing hugs and meaningless comments the locals felt obliged to deliver. They both looked so frightened. I wanted nothing more than to save them from this fiasco, but I couldn’t.

Sean, my husband—and I use that word loosely for a variety of reasons—worked the crowd: shaking hands, touching shoulders, even hugging people he had grown to dislike over the years. He thanked each person for coming, patting their hand as if it was a celebration, all the while displaying his million-dollar smile of expensive, brilliantly white teeth he had to have done during law school. He spoke in complete sentences, unlike the grunts and silence he reserved for me.

He was incredibly handsome; I had to give him that. His jet-black hair, strong jawline, square chin, and slightly hollowed cheeks made him the catch of the season twenty-six years ago. The problem was that Sean knew he was incredibly good-looking. It wasn’t until after we married that I realized he was in love with himself much more than he was with me.

On the morning we met, I just happened to cut through the pre-law building to get to my class. It was pouring, and I looked and felt like a drowned rat. My hair and clothes were soaked, and my shoes squeaked as I traipsed down the hallway. For some unknown reason, it was that morning that Sean decided he was ready to settle down, take a wife, and raise a family. It could have been anyone else he set his eyes on, but it was me he bumped into. I spent almost twenty-five of our twenty-six years together wishing I had braved the rain that morning, wishing I had never set eyes on the likes of Sean Hart.

Sean was impulsive. If he suddenly decided he wanted or needed something, it had to happen right then and there. There was no waiting, no thinking about it, no discussion. It was a done deal. He pursued me for one month, making me feel like the luckiest girl in the entire world. The day after graduation, we went down to the courthouse and pledged our love before the Justice of the Peace. The judge’s assistant and a man waiting to file a complaint against his neighbor’s dog became witnesses by default. I don’t know their names. I just wish none of us had been at the courthouse that morning.

We had spent the last two years of our marriage in what Sean referred to as divorce negotiations. Most of those discussions started civilly but often ended with me being hurled to the floor, spit on, kicked, or desperately struggling to peel his hands and fingers from my mouth and nose. Through the years, I became an expert at hiding bruises and other marks he left on me—both physical and emotional.

Why didn’t I leave? It sounds simple, doesn’t it? As simple as Why didn’t you make the bed? or Why didn’t you buy groceries? Why didn’t I pack a bag, walk out the door, and never look back? Sean was always at work, at a sporting event, in a bar, or somewhere else he would not divulge. There were plenty of missed opportunities to pack and leave. But it just wasn’t that easy. I was terrified of losing the things he held over me. He controlled every aspect of my life, from our household to the boys’ affection. Besides the money I had hidden away, I had nothing and no one to support me: no family, no close friends, no colleagues. Simply put, I felt abandoned, alone, and helpless. No one could save me from the mess I was in.

I retired not by choice but because Sean forced me to do so. When I reached twenty-five years at Hallman and Carter, most as the Director of the Human Services Department, he wanted me done. Not for any reason other than his insecurities. On a rare evening out, a night that revolved around Sean’s law firm, he thought the owner’s son and my boss, Drew Carter, had paid a little too much attention to me. It was completely innocent. While Sean played the room, Drew and I talked about work, but Sean didn’t see it that way. In his mind, I cheated on him, fraternized with someone who couldn’t help him climb his way to partner at his firm. He saw me as worthless that night.

I paid for it when we got home after midnight. The argument started in the car and didn’t end until I escaped out of the bathroom window and slept in an unlocked boathouse on the shore of Cedar Point Lake. I returned home later the next day to find Sean waiting to punish me for my indiscretion of the previous night. After a week of absences due to the flu, I returned to work in long-sleeved blouses and a new hairstyle—one that covered the bald spot and yellowed bruising on my forehead.

A month later, exactly two weeks before I could retire from Hallman and Carter with my full pension, Sean called Drew Carter and gave him my two-week notice. Then, he mailed a letter he typed and forced me to sign—if I wanted to continue to live. I was furious. He had crossed the line, and I was willing to fight for what was right. The drama went from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds. In a fit of rage, he threw a Waterford crystal vase at me. I ducked, but it shattered when it hit the marble fireplace. It would have been better had the vase hit me because missing me sent him into a rage worse than I had ever seen. He snapped. Sean grabbed a large piece of glass from the broken vase and chased me through the house, trapping me in a corner. He grabbed me in a chokehold; the crook of his elbow pressed against my windpipe as I struggled to breathe. Holding the glass to one side of my face, he lightly ran the point down my cheek before moving it toward my neck. I tried to turn to the side so I could draw a breath. As I dug my nails into his forearm, he squeezed harder. Finally, as everything began to fade to black, I stomped on the top of his foot with the heel of my boot. Instead of letting go, he threw me to the floor. I kicked at him, trying to get away, but he lay on top of me, pinning my arms against my chest, and stared into my eyes with his blank death stare. Again, he lifted the piece of glass for me to see before he methodically reached down and shoved it into my thigh. The more I reacted, the more he smiled. He stood up, kicked me in the head, and screamed at me to clean up the mess. He spun on his heels and walked away. It was like a release for him; once he was through hurting me, it was over—until the next time.

I sobbed silently and quietly writhed in pain, pressing my hand over the long cut to suppress the bleeding. I was afraid if he heard me, the cycle would begin again, and I wasn’t sure I could defend myself from another attack so soon.

I carefully pulled the glass from my leg. I needed stitches, probably a dozen or more, but over the years, I had become accustomed to taking care of my own injuries, protecting Sean’s dirty little secret. The cut bubbled and stung; I held my breath for several seconds. Finally, I dried the gap and pulled it together, sealing it the best I could with skin glue before stretching butterfly strips across the cut to hold the two sides together. Then I covered it with several large sterile pads before I cleaned up the rest of Sean’s mess.

It made no sense to me why Sean insisted I retire. I was sure he wanted out of our marriage as much as I did. But as I lay in Cole’s twin bed that night, with my throbbing leg propped up on two pillows and an ice pack over the wound, it became perfectly clear. Sean didn’t want me, but he didn’t want anyone else to have me either. I was positive he’d kill me before he’d let that happen.

***

On the night the first search party formed, I stood in the middle of the town square surrounded by three hundred people. I saw every one of them, but not one of them saw me. No one noticed me. No one attempted to speak to me. Yet there I was. Sometimes, people can look right at you and never really see you when you have lived your life invisibly—not because of anything you have done, but because others have put you in that situation. This gathering of my family and friends—for me—proved that point. I meant nothing to anyone. They were here for me, but I honestly didn’t matter to any of them.

It’s ironic how my disappearance brought the town together. It was the most newsworthy event to ever happen in Cedar Point—a city that could have been used as the background for the movie Groundhog Day. Nothing ever changed. Watches could be set by who was parked at Pauline’s Café at any particular time, the order in which folks entered the church, or the moment one of the patrol cars turned down any street. It was like living in Mayberry but on a bigger scale. The town drunk’s name wasn’t Otis—it was Frank—and none of the four deputies were named Barney.

For a town bordering on nearly 7,000 people, something exciting should have happened from time to time, but there was nothing: no carnivals, no celebrations—nothing.

A second whistle, this time low and hollow, cut through the evening air. People quieted as they inched closer to the gazebo, standing shoulder to shoulder, holding hands—neighbors, colleagues, and people who considered me their friend. The unusually warm September day had quickly faded into a cool, damp evening around sunset, forcing many to retrieve jackets and heavy sweatshirts from their bags. Then, much like the parting of the Red Sea, the crowd split down the middle, creating a path for Sean and the boys to move toward the platform. A sea of whispers filled the air and hung above the crowd as if in large speech bubbles—a few mentioned me, but most were about that poor handsome man.

Sean was clearly in his element; he loved the attention and slowly turned in a circle to soak it in. The boys hung their heads, hiding from the attention, the prying eyes of the crowd. I tipped my head and pulled the bill of my baseball cap down to keep from meeting Sean’s eyes.

First, thank you for coming. A portable microphone sat on a wobbly makeshift podium. Brian Enderly, the Chief of Police, bent the microphone forward and then back again. He towered above the mic; for it to capture his voice, he had to lean forward. The position looked tremendously uncomfortable. Camera lights flashed in his face, and he blinked several times to clear his vision as he looked into the crowd. The media shoved microphones on extended arms in his direction, forcing him to block one that narrowly missed his face. As you all know, Jane…ah, he stumbled, Mrs. Jane Hart is missing. The last time she was seen was Tuesday morning around 5:30 a.m. when her husband left for the gym before going to work. Brian looked at Sean. I couldn’t believe Sean had the audacity to turn and wave to the crowd.

Brian adjusted his hat with both hands; he tugged it down over his short brown hair. It was very apparent he was hiding his frustration. He hated Sean nearly as much as I did. When Sean returned home around ten o’clock Tuesday night, his wife was missing. According to Mr. Hart, her cell phone and purse were located in their entry. Her black Armada was still parked in the garage. We’ve had a search team at their house for the last two days and a second group of detectives following other leads. Lake searches are also underway. None of Mrs. Hart’s credit cards have been used, and there has been no activity on any of their bank accounts.

The air was crisp; the excitement of the crowd added to the chill. I almost got caught up in it myself until I remembered it was me everyone was searching for. There hadn’t been a missing person case in the town since John Bauer accidentally locked himself in his cellar nearly three decades before. Most Cedar Point crimes fell under one of three categories: parking tickets, loitering, or noise violations. Other than the sheer number of people in the town, there was no reason to employ a sheriff and four deputies.

Brian looked up toward the darkened sky above the throng of searchers. I could tell he was uncomfortable in the spotlight. He scanned the crowd as he loudly cleared his throat without turning away from the hot mic. Evidence suggests there was a struggle. I can’t go into details, but we are certain Mrs. Hart did not leave on her own accord.

Hearing him refer to me as Mrs. Hart felt so wrong. Brian Enderly had known me his entire life. We went to elementary and high school together; we even dated for several months before we graduated. We had planned out our entire life together after college, but Brian insisted on returning to Cedar Point afterward, and I wanted to get as far away from this town as I possibly could. But you see how well that worked.

Our goal is to reunite Mrs. Hart with her family. As I said, we have a group of officers working on other leads, but we have to consider the possibility that… he took a deep breath and blurted out his next sentence, we may be looking for a body. The crowd inhaled, sucking away the air I needed to breathe. I coughed, but no one noticed. A high-pitched wail suddenly rose from the back of the crowd. People turned to watch my sisters sobbing uncontrollably. Those closest to them circled around and offered words of support. But I knew their outburst was all for show. The last time I had spoken to either of them was almost two years before—a month after Grandma Betty died. Both before and after, there had been silence.

Please, Brian called into the microphone. Please, friends! Please, we need to focus on finding Ja… Mrs. Hart. Several officers, both from Cedar Point and the neighboring communities, climbed up the back of the platform and stood slightly behind Brian. So here’s how this is going to work. Based on where you are currently standing, I’ll divide you into teams. A few individuals linebackered their way through the crowd to join up with friends. Your officer will give you specific directions about where and how to search. I watched him suck in a deep breath and blow it out; the microphone caught the gust and started to squeal. Brian stepped back and waited for it to quiet before dividing the crowd. Whenever Brian got frustrated, you knew. His frustration was etched deeply into his face. His breathing grew deeper, and he forcefully exhaled.

As the searchers shifted to their part of the square for further instructions, I wandered toward the edge of one group, keeping enough distance for no one to see me. I stood in the shadows of a massive elm tree and tilted my chin toward the ground. Peering over the top of a pair of dark lens glasses, I watched Sean climb the steps and stand in front of Brian.

Where do you want me to go? he asked. And just so you know, we’re not staying at that shithole motel you put us up at for the last two nights. Leave it to Sean to care about his accommodations while I’m missing.

I could tell Brian wanted to choke him. I saw his jaw tighten. Take Jane’s family and go over to the Moonlight. Nancy’s expecting all of you. I’ll send word when I know more. But don’t expect to hear from me until morning. Brian turned toward the boys. Cole and Luke, you can head on home to your place tonight, if you wish, but there’s plenty of room at the Moonlight if you’d rather stay there. He looked at the large group of Harts and the Sterlings. I’ll want to talk to all of you at some point in the next couple of days. So don’t plan on leaving town. Understand?

The boys were gone before Brian finished. I watched them head toward the main drag. I wanted nothing more than to follow, but I couldn’t put them in danger.

I need to go home and pick up… Sean started to tell Brian.

Brian held up his hand. Not gonna happen, Sean. My team hasn’t finished over there. And even then, it could be several days before we let you back in.

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding! Sean kicked the railing with the tip of his Danner hiking boots. My wife’s missing, and I can’t go home to get clothes?

You heard me, Sean. You step one foot on your property and I’ll have your ass in jail so fast, you won’t see it coming. Brian walked toward the back steps of the gazebo. But before descending, he spun around. "You know what burns my ass, Sean? If my wife were missing, I’d be a hell of a lot more worried about her than having clean clothes or where I spent the night. Sean lurched at Brian but stopped at Brian’s first word. IF…you lay your hands on me, Sean, you’ll spend the night in jail instead of at the Moonlight. Got it?"

Way to go, Brian! I thought.

Then I walked out of the city park for the last time.

CHAPTER 2

Jane Hart

Being invisible is soul-crushing. It is a loneliness that squeezes so tightly across your chest at times you can’t breathe. That was how I was treated for my entire life: alone, unnoticed, unappreciated—at least to the people who should have mattered the most to me. I was born into invisibility; I was raised with it. And for some inexplicable reason, it has continued throughout my entire life. It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy—not even Viv, my mother.

For years, I had nightmares about running down a hill, trailed by a gigantic steel ball. No matter which way I turned, the metal ball followed. When I grew too tired to run anymore, I tried to push back to keep it from destroying me,